Advancing Social System Development through Organizational Change

Abstract

The rapid pace of social and economic change around the world has led to many books and articles on how organizations can change their structures and procedures. People in the fields of systems and cybernetics have been active contributors to this literature. They strive not only to bring together people from a range of disciplines but also to combine the theories, methods and perspectives of many disciplines. The descriptions of new management methods from the fields of systems and cybernetics have broadened the field of strategic planning, introducing ideas not just from business administration and management but also fields such as biology, philosophy and cognitive science. This article seeks to further develop a multidisciplinary theory of social and organizational change that the authors described in previous papers. The article suggests a model for how knowledge from existing disciplines can play a role in the change process and when the traditional disciplines can be most helpful in a process of organizational change. The article describes how two methods—quality improvement and group facilitation—can contribute to social learning.

Keywords:

• Cybernetics
• group facilitation
• management
• quality improvement
• social learning
• systems science